WHAT is that sound that cracks the air, that rip in the quivering night ? What is that flash in the scurrying clouds, that shiver of living light ? What is that clatter of hurrying feet, and why do the women run Unkempt, bareheaded, and white of face ? 'Tis the roar of the minute gun.

Thrice o'er the rearing billow-crests, and thrice through the flying scud Has echoed that call from the men who drown out there in the hungry flood; Thrice, and again—when with rumble and creak and many a warning shout From the open doors of the station-house they are dragging the Life-boat out.

Nobly the steaming horses strain, and the spark from the shingle flies, As each of the sixteen steel-clad hoofs for a surer lodgment tries; And half of a hundred set-jawed men haul on to the straining trace, For the Vikings' children are running with Death in a grim and daring race.

Over the shingle, across the sands, to the edge of the cauldron tide, And then with a cheer the Life-boatmen are off on their midnight ride; the man for his toddling child.

Their steeds are the Lord's white horses, all plunging unbridled, wild, And the wife on the wet sand prays for her man, and The billows they break in a seething froth where the lamps of the watchers glow, And the salt spray lashes their anxious cheeks as they watch the Life-boat go ; They peer through the howling waste of night, and they start as the sea-birds scream, With their white wings fighting the roaring blast like the creatures of a dream.

This is the rede of the Life-boatmen, the men who have fought their fight— Fought with the sea as their fathers fought, in the swirl of the angry might; Saving by might of the bending oar from its ravenous foam-flecked lips The lives of the men who for daily bread go down to the sea in ships.

W. B..